Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh issued a grave warning that the Trump administration is planning to “incite” violence during Saturday’s “No Kings” protests, which he said he expected to be the “largest peaceful protest in American history.”
“Trump and his people, they want violence, and they're going to try to incite it all day,” Walsh said Saturday, appearing on MSNBC’s morning show “The Weekend.” “Ain't gonna happen!”
There are around 2,700 No Kings protests expected to take place Saturday all across the country, and are a follow up to the previous No Kings protests held last summer, attended by as many as 6 million people, and sparked by opposition to President Donald Trump.
“We are going to see the largest – I mean the largest – peaceful protest in American history,” Walsh said. “People from all over the country coming together. We may disagree on a lot of issues, but everybody today is united in no kings; not here, not in America.”
The No Kings protests reportedly have Trump “really, really worried,” according to journalist Greg Sargent, a fear he argued was made evident by his party’s “coordinated” effort to smear the protesters as “terrorists.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has labeled the impending demonstration as a “hate America rally,” and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) called it a “Soros paid-for protest,” referencing the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a common “bogeyman” for the GOP.
Walsh, who left Congress in 2013 and has since gone on to become a talk radio host, told MSNBC that the GOP’s smearing of the No King protests was a clear sign of the Trump administration’s growing fear of dissent among Americans, and the optics that such a large protest would have.
“What my former party is scared to death of – and some have told me this privately – is mammoth peaceful protests,” Walsh said. “That's what scares the heck out of them. What they want is violence, what they want is division – they don't want millions and millions of Americans united in defending democracy.”